


then, now, and evermore

by Medie



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-22
Updated: 2010-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-07 11:19:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>thanks to <a href="http://havocthecat.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://havocthecat.livejournal.com/"><b>havocthecat</b></a> for the beta. Set both post "Sleeping in Light" and handy about the middle of Season 2</p>
    </blockquote>





	then, now, and evermore

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to [](http://havocthecat.livejournal.com/profile)[**havocthecat**](http://havocthecat.livejournal.com/) for the beta. Set both post "Sleeping in Light" and handy about the middle of Season 2

_now:_

Entil'zha was a name she thought should sound alien on her tongue, Minbari a language that should be difficult to hear on her lips but they come easier than the Russian she grew up speaking and, in their way, bring with them a certain sort of comfort.

Susan woke to the peace of a Minbari morning and the summons of her president. Mornings on any planet were not things she had been comfortable with for some time, the dawning of first light serving only to remind her of regrets long held as the ghosts of old friends lost vanished with the night. She preferred the ghosts to the regrets but never thought too closely why that was so, only accepting that it was. Minbar's mornings with the soft sound of morning prayers floating on the breeze brought with them the answer that, anywhere else, Susan would not have wanted to hear.

Anywhere else was not Minbar, and on Minbar all she could do was listen.

_then:_

Delenn knew following prophecy would be a heady and difficult experience full of many emotions but she did not expect the fear that began to course through her veins in the days following her understanding. The understanding that came with time and perspective on the change that she had undertaken. The days after her mind truly began to comprehend the change that prophecy dictated she undergo. It was _permanent_, she had changed in ways she had not expected and those changes brought fear but she could not hope to express any such thoughts on the matter to Lennier or any of her remaining staff.

Those who walked the path of prophecy were not permitted the luxury of obvious doubt. Those who surrounded her already held uncertainties, showing the fear she hid in her heart would accomplish nothing but the validation of those uncertainties.

She could not permit that when the lives of so many depended upon the surety of her steps.

Delenn now knew fear as an intimate companion in a way she had never known it before. She wished for a moment to share that fear, lessen it but she had decided to take it as a sacred lesson and made so because of the solitude. There were many things one could know in a lifetime and the most sacred of those were learned in solitude. Though she desperately wished to feel the comfort of another's touch in her fear, she accepted that it could not be so.

She walked her path in the midst of the masses but she walked it alone and, perhaps, that terrified her the most of all.

_now:_

So many reports, Susan quirked a grin at the young Minbari ranger attempting to juggle the many flexis and data crystals overflowing in his arms. "I don't need to read those *now*," she reminded with amusement.

He caught a crystal before it could fall. "Perhaps not, but the time will come when you will wish to do so."

She didn't try to hold her laughter from her voice. "Perhaps, but that time is not *now*." She patted his cheek. "On the other side of that door is breakfast, with that breakfast waits my coffee. When I have my coffee, I will not read those reports as coffee should not be defiled with the nasty business of intelligence. Now, somewhere in this extremely large, really quite lovely building is my office. I know I must have one because I am a very important person who never really manages to *get* there but if you leave those reports in that office? I may actually have a good reason to finally find the place and when I do I promise I will sit down and read every last line. All right?"

Lennier would have killed her for confusing the boy so but she couldn't help it, it was a compulsion really. "I..." her newly appointed aide swallowed whatever thoughts on the peculiarities of Earthers he must have been having and nodded. "All right."

"Good," she nodded curtly, hiding the little malicious part of her that was gleefully enjoying the moment. "Then go do it." With characteristic military precision she turned, letting her cloak flare out behind her and advanced on the door.

When it opened to admit her, Delenn looked up from her place at the table and greeted Susan with that smile she loved. The one of pure serenity overlying sin and Susan returned it in kind.

_then:_

"Good morning, Ambassador."

In the silence of the tube, Lieutenant Commander Ivanova's greeting washed over Delenn's raw and jangled nerves with the soothing ease of a balm. "Lt. Commander," she greeted with a faint smile meant to hide her feelings. "You appear well this morning."

Ivanova smiled quickly, the wicked little one which fascinated Delenn as so many things about the woman did. Susan Ivanova was of singular character among the many aliens that she had ever had occasion to deal with in her career. There was so much Ivanova said within the movements of her body and the in-betweens of every gesture and Delenn delighted in trying to wring every subtle message from each one. Ivanova was a personal fascination. "I appear better than you do," she answered. A peculiar sort of empathy appearing in her eyes, Delenn felt a feather soft touch pluck at her sleeve then seconds later fingers brush along her skin. "The change..." and there it was. That speaking of a truth within a word and a question layered above it all.

She smiled, the exhaustion of controlling her fear showing through in the action. The memory of Ivanova's hands working gently through the snarled mass of her newfound hair to free her of the tangles and inadvertently easing her terror comforted Delenn and uncoiled the emotional tangle within her soul.

Taking a measured breath, she met Ivanova's eyes. "It is unexpected -- " she stopped conscious of their surroundings, Delenn asked hesitantly "May we speak privately?" and confessing her own truth beneath the question.

'I am afraid.'

_now:_   
Light streamed onto the balcony as the chill of night slowly burned away beneath the morning's sun. Minbar was breathtaking in the daylight that reflected off the crystal formations.

"You look rested," Delenn said as Susan took seat at the table. The President looked the same, anything but presidential in a rose-colored morning gown. The colors of mourning were gone, left behind in the forward march of life's celebration. "You slept well I trust?"

"Very," Susan affirmed, smiling at the sight of the steaming coffee. "But you knew that, didn't you?" She watched the mischievous twinkle in the other woman's eye over the rim of her mug as she took a deep swallow. Delenn knew everything while pretending to know next to nothing and glorying in the illusion.

"I was concerned," Delenn admitted, elegant fingers sliding tentatively over Susan's in a gentle, furtive touch. "You seemed so tired when you arrived."

She had been. Tired of so much, of being a symbol of something Earth refused to admit it had failed, tired of surviving one conflict after another only to return to EarthForce as little more than a rallying point. She'd become so tired of just about everything when she'd been called to Minbar. In the time since, she had spent so much time recovering herself and her place in things. She'd slowly remembered what it was to be alive and much of that had come from Delenn herself.

"I feel much better now," Susan forgot her coffee and let her fingers capture Delenn's, tangling them together in the warm clasp of flesh. "Thank you."

Delenn smiled and the old fires once banked and left to embers kindled back to life in both their eyes. "I am glad," she murmured softly and Susan had never been more happy to hear anything from anyone in her life.

_then:_

The privacy of her quarters had become Delenn's refuge since the change and the reactions, speaking here was so easy in comparison to elsewhere. Here were the reminders that prompted her to recall the last time Susan Ivanova had entered her refuge. It had seemed so silly then with her imparting the simple answers to little problems human women faced daily and explaining all the idiosyncrasies they learned in the upbringing she had never had.

Her misunderstanding of the import of that meeting was reassuring in a way. She knew so many of the secrets that could never be understood, it was easy to lose perspective surrounded by it. One could be lost in the power of the privilege and to know she could still miss the obvious truths was indeed reassuring in its way.

"It's difficult," she murmured, watching Ivanova shed her uniform jacket and her link. "In my soul I do not believe that I have changed though in my body I have changed much." Delenn sighed, focusing on the white of the shirt at the edge of her finger's reach as the other woman settled beside her. "The others see the changes of my body and they confuse them with changes in my soul. I am afraid, in my weaker moments, that they may be correct."

Ivanova listened to the admission quietly and Delenn watched those intent eyes move over the dark of her new hair and the changed features of her face. "And if they are?"

"Then I do not know," Delenn sighed. "I do not know if what I do is hubris or destiny. The change..." the answer in Ivanova's question became abundantly clear as the scales fell away. "Scares me, I no longer know even myself. After all these years, I no longer know the response to even the touch of my own hand."

The implication of her words, so practical and frank, elicited a bloom of colour in Ivanova's cheeks though the lieutenant commander gave no quarter and did not hold back.

"Which is to be expected," she assured. "The responses of the Human nervous system are bound to be very different to that of the Minbari. It must be unsettling to be uncertain of even your own body's reactions when everything's falling apart around you. Worse yet if you can't even discuss it with anyone."

Delenn slid her hands along the silks of her robes, suppressing a shiver when they passed over her thighs. "It has been...difficult." She smiled dryly. "And that is so much of an understatement as you well know."

They laughed together and Ivanova nodded. "Yes, Ambassador, it usually is."

"Please," Delenn corrected quietly, "here, call me Delenn."

_now:_

The feeling wasn't one she'd known in a while and Susan sighed leisurely, her naked body sliding across the fine fabrics of the bedsilks and luxuriating beneath the deliberate touches of Delenn's mouth. The decision to return to bed had been one of guilty pleasure that neither woman felt particularly guilty about. The universe owed them a few moments of pleasure after all that they had sacrificed in its service.

She let a moan of pleasure fill the hushed atmosphere of their refuge, one hand tangling in Delenn's hair to draw the Minbari woman away from her body to bring her mouth within reach. The kiss brought the rest of her into full contact with Susan and allowed her to feel the changes the years the years had wrought. As beautiful as ever, there were changes in Delenn still as hers was now a body which had carried and birthed life.

Delenn didn't fight when she rolled them, eager to explore the changes, and Susan hid a grin of amusement against the swell of a breast, lips chasing the curve of its underside. John would have appreciated the thought of a Minbari surrendering without a fight but as present as he was in their thoughts, they didn't need her voicing it now. When she and Delenn came together in this way, they were answering unspoken needs in each other and remembrance was a need already spoken to.

Instead, her mouth moved to find the round peak of a nipple, her fingers seeking the heat between Delenn's thighs to make the president rise off the bed with a cry of pleasure.

The words which spilled from her lips as Susan's fingers moved, plying the secrets from her flesh, were in Minbari. She could have understood them if she wished, the language was long since dear to her, but she didn't wish. She wanted to lose herself in the feel of Delenn, in the sound and scent of her. Paying attention to hearing and comprehending was not something she cared to do right now.

Instead, she took a moment to slide her hand over the curve of Delenn's hip and the familiar shape of it. It had been years since she'd seen Delenn this way and not since before the Shadow War, they'd both been a thousand different woman in the meantime but no matter the memories were the same. When Susan brought her mouth to replace her hand, Delenn shuddered and came apart in just the same way as before.

Come full circle and, in the fullness of time, they had been prepared to begin again.

_then:_

When she first met Susan Ivanova, Delenn would have never expected this. She never dreamed that in time she would find herself tangled in the dark with the near-universally feared officer. She had found, however, that that the universe often permitted itself a more grandiose imagination than the tiny bits of itself which blundered about among the stars.

Susan, she cannot think of her as Ivanova now, groaned in amazement when she slipped her still-slick fingers down the firm muscles of her stomach. "Again?!"

It was fascinating to see so unfamiliar a tone emerging from her and Delenn thought she should like hear it again. "You have reintroduced me to myself, Susan, to sensations I had forgotten in the rush to destiny and," she smiled with mischief, sliding fingers into the wet heat of Susan's body, "introduced me to the advantages I have recently acquired. I...wish to thank you properly."

Susan sucked in a sharp breath, her body reacting, and Delenn smiled in delight. In this moment, cocooned by darkness and the sheets they were lost in, the fear which had plagued her had departed as she felt the comfort of another's touch. Above all, even above the reassurance of Susan's presence was the knowledge she was a confident who would listen to her fears without judgment.

Someone she could trust with something so pedantic as her fears. Such was a luxury that she could do nothing but treasure it. "Please, Susan," she said softly, marveling at the change in her own voice as well. It was as if the whole of the intimacy of the act were contained within her words and Delenn felt her own body respond. "Let me do for you the same as you have for me."

She twisted her touch inside Susan, ready for the buck of hips in response, listening to her pleasured cry.

"I believe that it is said, I will take that as a yes?"

_hereafter:_

The Minbari were, are, and always will be the true masters of discretion. While the friendship of President Delenn Sheridan and Entil'zha Ivanova would raise many an eyebrow and elicit many a whispered rumor on other worlds, it was not so on Minbar.

Even if they shared the romanticism of the rumors of Sheridan's greatest allies finding comfort in one another, none among the Minbari would admit it but they knew their world had become a refuge for the pair. In the silent looks and fleeting touches they saw a connection borne of fire and loss, passion and pleasure. Such bonds were rare even among their people and were spoken of in whispered truths of respect and reverenced by all the castes. It was because of this, the Minbari were fierce in their protection.

When the President and Entil'zha walked among them, they would walk in peace.

And no one with an ounce of wisdom to their souls would argue it.


End file.
